


sound proof

by canadino



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 13:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9125194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadino/pseuds/canadino
Summary: Sound travels. Kei's ears are sharp, as expected.





	

The day Tsukishima Kei is seen out in public without a pair of headphones in his hands or around his neck is doomsday indeed. It isn’t that he particularly enjoys music more than the average person or is training some kind of inner ear. It’s just easier to drown out dead noise and there’s a lot of dead noise around him, frankly. One only has to look in his immediate vicinity, namely the Karasuno boys volleyball team. He can’t listen to music during practice, but he sure isn’t going to willingly subject himself to listening to Hinata prattle on about typical simple-minded country boy things and he definitely did not want to hear Kageyama hem and haw at him for no productive reason. He’ll keep his ears free for Coach and his teachers and Sawamura and Sugawara and Shimizu (and honestly, a longer than he would admit list of people he either respected or deferred to), but everyone else could flap their mouths to his personal soundtrack for all he cares.

The downside of this is that he can’t really operate if all he can do is hear himself think. He listens to music and podcasts and audiobooks to keep from being bothered about trivial things, but when he’s alone, he finds the silence strangely suffocating too. It’s the kind of problem that would make his mother probably shake her head and say things like, your eyes are bigger than your stomach. In this case, it would probably be, your ears are wider than your attention span or something like that. If he thinks about it too much, Kei frustrates himself. So when he isn’t helping his mother with chores around the house or watching television, he puts in earbuds and does his homework or reads in peace. 

Honestly, he’s grateful when Akiteru visits, especially when he comes back for a long break. Kei is beginning to suspect that his mother is talking about him behind his back to her friends, pitying him unnecessarily about him staying around and not spending his youthful years cavorting with school friends or even being rebellious and talking back about getting caught smoking cigarettes. When Akiteru is around, Kei has an excuse not to wear headphones all the time because the possibility of having to interact with someone at home increases exponentially. It hasn’t been long since he’s made peace with his brother (although really, it isn’t like they were fighting to begin with even if Akiteru hadn’t been forthcoming with his high school position, but it’s a complicated combination of betrayal and guilt and a lot of other feelings), but now he keeps his door slightly ajar. Akiteru picks him up on the last day of classes before winter break and takes him to get something hot to drink. 

“How is work?” Kei asks when they’re leaning against the hood of Akiteru’s car, sipping hot drinks like a pair of brothers. Kei has shifted his bag to his left arm so it isn’t pressing up against his brother’s hip. This only creates an empty space there that the north wind fills, alluding to the warmth that would come from standing closer to Akiteru and matching bony hip to bony hip (although when Kei happens across Akiteru coming from the bath, it appears that his brother’s eating habits are different out of the house and there’s a sturdy amount of flesh there). Akiteru laughs, his breath fogging up over his scarf.

“Look at you, trying to be a young adult and relating to me.” He closes that space that Kei has been thinking about, flinging an arm around his brother’s shoulders and pulling him into his side. For any other person, Kei would fling them off, barbs dripping thick from his lips, but Akiteru is family and he isn’t around all the time, so he’ll hold his tongue for now. Akiteru presses the warm end of the can of corn soup in his hand into the crevice of the brooding scowl on Kei’s forehead. “What would you say if I told you your big brother was being bullied at work and cries at home every night?”

“I don’t know,” Kei mumbles, settling for putting his mouth on the lip of his can of milk tea to avoid answering. If he says he’ll avenge his brother, Akiteru will only laugh harder. If he says he doesn’t care and it’s an adult’s responsibility to be strong-willed, Akiteru might still laugh but he also might take his words to heart and be discouraged. Akiteru is the older sibling, but Kei is aware he wields some kind of power over Akiteru, although he doesn't know the extent. “You should work harder, if that’s true.”

“I’m so happy you haven’t changed your studious ways,” Akiteru says. Kei sees people noticing them and smiling to themselves; it’s a universally known fact that high school boys are difficult. It’s heart-warming, especially to the older folks, to see a pair of brothers on such familiar terms. Akiteru’s hand cups Kei’s bicep and Kei is less nestled into Akiteru’s side now than he is tucked into the curvature of Akiteru’s body. It’s true, though, that high school boys are difficult - this is a well-populated area. Students from Karasuno High School are highly likely to walk through, eyes wide and seeing. Kei pushes himself off from the hood of the car and subconsciously touches his ears. 

“We should go home now.” 

When they do arrive home, their mother is watching the news in the living room. Her mood has risen considerably having both sons at home and Kei can’t bring himself to ignore her when she greets them with a huge, beaming smile. Akiteru, on the other hand, excuses himself as Kei shrugs off his coat and goes to sit next to her; his older brother gestures upstairs and offers an unclear explanation and leaves. Kei sits with his mother until he feels uncomfortable staying in his school uniform for so long after he’s left the school grounds and takes his bag with him to his room. Akiteru’s door is closed. 

As Kei changes into something looser and warm, old sweatpants that are now soft after many washings, he wonders if his mother will ever clean out their rooms after he leaves for college. After Akiteru went off to college, his mother kept it as it was, only going in to change the sheets before vacations when his brother would come back and vacuuming the corners. Akiteru still uses his room at home sometimes, during extended holidays like the one he is currently taking where it would just be inconvenient to drive back and forth from his apartment. It keeps them grounded in his mother’s life, he knows, the knowledge that her sons could come back at any time and feel as if they haven’t left. She could make a little money renting them out, to be honest; he has no intention of calling this place his home after he officially leaves so he won’t mind people touching his things. But on a lighter note, the thought of being on holiday break soothes him, with homework he had reviewed during self-study and noting it to be something he could do during the last few days with Yamaguchi without too much worry. He allows himself a moment to just vegetate, something he would berate Hinata for endlessly (which Hinata does on a daily basis, to which it would be bothersome to mention every single time), and Kei lies down on his bed, satisfied. 

He’s about to reach for his headphones when he hears a sigh from his brother’s room, right on the other side of the wall from his bed. Their rooms are structured a little differently, but they had used to keep each other awake knocking on the wall softly until Akiteru entered middle school. Kei had thought his brother had been napping, but the sigh had been a bit more forceful than a sound someone would make while asleep. It actually troubles Kei for a moment, and he wonders if Akiteru was being roundabout when he mentions being bullied at work, and it’s because he’s quiet in thought that he hears Akiteru a little clearer. 

Akiteru is sighing, but it’s ragged and irregular and Kei knows enough about the world to know what that’s about. 

For one horrified second, Kei imagines a scenario where Akiteru had summoned an old girlfriend or whatnot and she had climbed through to the second floor from a tree and his brother had come home and went straight to her, their mother none the wiser. It’s so absurd but believable at the time. But still rooted in place on his bed, hearing Akiteru’s voice pitch into a whine that Kei has never heard before, the idea is ludicrous; Akiteru has more tact than to invite a girl over without telling them. What’s more, he wouldn’t risk doing adult things with anyone when he knows his brother and mother are downstairs. Still, the next best explanation doesn’t calm Kei down any more - Akiteru is a man and he’s got a functional sex drive according to the mentions of his relationships on Facebook so it isn’t anything unusual. Kei is self confident enough to admit that he masturbates sometimes. But - still - one never thinks about one’s closest friends and family members doing the same. For all intents and purposes, none of the other boys at Karasuno do anything like that and his mother received his brother and him from a stork. It’s all very family friendly. 

Except - he can still hear Akiteru breathing from touching himself on the other side of the wall and Kei is a little baffled to find himself half-hard and scrambles a little more frantically to find headphones. In the process, he knocks his elbow accidentally against the wall with a bang and freezes. He doesn’t hear Akiteru anymore either. Kei wants to die; his brother must know that he’s overheard now. But while Kei is fumbling the headphone port into his phone, he begins to hear his brother again, a little muffled as if his mouth is buried in his pillow. Kei plays the first song he gets his finger onto and he doesn’t care what it is because the sound drowns everything else out. 

Akiteru can manage to look Kei in the eyes during dinner, but Kei finds it hard to do the same. Their mother doesn’t consider it anything unusual, and Akiteru also doesn’t either, he’s sure, because he’s a teenage boy going through a Difficult Time when he is prone to moods like this. After he’s polished off his bowl, he escapes back to his room without offering to do the dishes, something he hears his mother lament and his brother placate her about. Kei closes his door and puts on his headphones and holes himself up for the night. 

The next day, Yamaguchi calls off their plans to meet in the afternoon because his mother needs him for a last-minute emergency errand. Kei’s own mother wants to run an errand of her own, although she means to also meet with an old friend from college and does not invite her sons along. Akiteru has plans to meet up with a few members of the Kaji Wild Dogs, but it isn’t until later the evening which he invites Kei along to. Kei mumbles an agreement to this at the table, because Akiteru is looking at him in a way that suggests he’ll ask why if Kei refuses and he isn’t in the mood to explain himself yet. 

It’s one-fifty-three in the afternoon when Kei decides he’s had enough of this tiptoeing. He hates being forward and he hates confrontations, but if he doesn’t say anything, he isn’t going to be able to speak to his brother normally. He knows it’s irrational, because given time he’ll get over it and Akiteru isn’t home often enough for it to be a perpetual sore but - well, if Akiteru is planning on having a few more wank sessions while he’s home, Kei thinks it’s in his best interests to put his foot down on when it is appropriate. 

Akiteru’s door is open when Kei approaches the elephant in the room, which is a good sign. Still, he knocks and keeps a level glare at the ground when Akiteru summons him in. “Nii-chan,” Kei begins, feeling suddenly incredibly foolish. Does he really think it’s his place to lecture his older brother on masturbation in the first place?

“What’s wrong? I could tell something was troubling you since yesterday.”

Kei balls his hands into fists and says, “If you knew, then why didn’t you say anything? It’s not my fault…” He’ll lose his resolve if he goes about this in an extended way. “I heard you yesterday. Through the wall. You were…” Tsukishima Kei masturbates too, like any teenage boy, but he can’t bring himself to say it so easily in front of his brother. He and Akiteru may have had a falling out, but still, this is the brother he used to follow around when they were younger and who taught him how to properly wash his hair and the right way to hold a sharp knife. “...I heard you...jerking off yesterday.” The words come out in a rush. 

Akiteru is silent and Kei keeps his gaze on the ground. He feel secondhand embarrassment, since he wasn’t the one caught with his hands down his pants. But when Akiteru speaks, it doesn’t sound as ashamed as Kei expected. “Oh, is that it? Sorry about that. I didn’t think you’d be able to hear me.”

Kei looks up, his mind quickly going through all the permutations of what he could say in response and how they might be answered. “That’s it? You’re not...upset or anything?”

“What do I have to be upset about? I’m sure you do it too. It’s a completely normal thing to do. I mean, I really am sorry that you heard and felt bad about it.” Akiteru watches him as Kei fidgets. “Or…”

“Or?”

Akiteru smiles, and Kei - for all his experience with the range of facial expressions a person can possess - cannot tell if it’s the look of someone with awkward petition or cunning wherewithal. “Oh, Kei,” Akiteru says, his brother’s name coming out as a low breath, and Kei suddenly remembers the sounds of Akiteru’s breathing through the wall. “I’m so humiliated that you overheard me getting myself off. You won’t tell mom, will you? You can’t tell anyone.”

“Of course I won’t,” Kei says, startled that Akiteru would suggest such a thing. He knows of the unspoken pact between men and brothers. But Akiteru is still looking at him curiously.

“I’ll do anything if you won’t tell, Kei,” his brother says. “Just tell me what you want. I’ll suck your cock if you won’t tell.”

Kei reels, but his feet are stuck in place rigid like how he felt last night. “Nii-chan,” he just says. He knows he can say no and run and Akiteru would apologize and repent, but the offer has been placed on the table. Akiteru stands and places a hand on his shoulder, and instead of pushing him away and fleeing, Kei finds his feet taking him toward Akiteru’s bed and he sits. This is the bed where his brother was stroking himself on. He hears the sound of Akiteru closing the bedroom door, although their mother has made it clear she will not be returning for a few hours. 

“You won’t tell if I do this, right?” Akiteru says, and his eyes are glittering as he kneels at Kei’s feet. They both know he won’t, even if this didn’t happen, but it’s part of this roleplay or whatever this is. Kei has no idea, but he lets his brother pull off his pants and flinches when Akiteru reaches for his underwear, his face incredibly close to his crotch. When Akiteru sucks him off, Kei squeezes his eyes shut and wonders what kind of material his brother uses if he’s like this. 

He thinks he has a bit of an idea when he finishes and Akiteru wipes him off meticulously and says, “There. I’ll make sure to be quiet next time so you won’t be able to hear me even with headphones in.” Kei promises himself to keep one ear open in the future.


End file.
